The Backrooms: 1998 [Review]

The Backrooms: 1998 is a first-person found footage psychological horror game set in a Backroom environment. Players take on the role of a teenager who has fallen into this mysterious place. The game focuses on exploration, and unraveling the story. Unfortunately, it isn’t true to the original story of the Backrooms as the game has a monster running after you that can and will kill you. I don’t mind horror games with a monster but the original story of The Backrooms doesn’t have one, the idea is that the horror comes from the liminal space of a labyrinth that makes you go insane. I think The Backrooms: 1998 sets up that space well. The setting is eerie and maze-like. You can even mark walls with spray paint. As you play you’ll see figures and shadows moving out of the way or into the walls, walls disappear and reappear, and some rooms even change upon entering a second time. I think having the monster takes away from what could have been an interesting game. It feels like the safe bet to add a monster and loud jump scares. The monster also seems to be sound-based in a way as the game is supposed to listen to your microphone. And yet the monster can see me in the game, when hiding in a tunnel I noticed that the monster will switch sides if I walk closer to either exit. It took me out of the environment. On top of the monster mechanic, the main gameplay is fetch quest esc tasks where you just roam around the Backrooms until you happen across the items.

I didn’t just have a problem with the gameplay, I also experienced a bit of motion sickness while playing the game. Now, I’ve never gotten ill from a found footage-styled game or movie, but the movement in this game is very exaggerated. When running the character and camera bounce heavily and there aren’t any settings like “camera bob” offered to change it. My fiancée had to leave the room after a bit and I just steered clear from running for the most part. As for some other issues, the sound mixing wasn’t the greatest and distracted from the game. It also caused some of the jumpscares sounds to be ear-piercing and startling. The game relies on too many jumpscares that don’t even make much sense like a giant bug crawling across the camera. Lastly, the menu/inventory system is a broken and kinda useless version of Resident Evil’s. The game uses lazy fallbacks like jumpscares and a monster instead of being confident in the environment. The game could have stayed closer in psychological thriller territory as a way to be truer to the source material. The story the game presents is also a bit weak, there’s an opening cut scene showing a kid falling into the Backrooms while skateboarding. But there isn’t much to engage with after that. I was surprised to see that the game had voice acting, and the main character’s voice isn't obnoxious like I’ve heard in other games. The Backrooms: 1998 didn’t have much to offer in terms of engagement.